


Sleepless

by sanctuary_for_all



Series: Home [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2836880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuary_for_all/pseuds/sanctuary_for_all
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a few moments, Jim's quiet voice cut through the dimness. "I'm sorry." The words were barely a breath, sincere enough to hurt. "I'd do it again, but I'm still so damn sorry."  (Missing scene from "Star Trek Into Darkness")</p><p>***Now with chapter 2***</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set the night after Jim wakes up in hospital at the end of the movie. Naturally, there are spoilers.

"Why aren't you asleep?"

At the sudden sound of Jim's voice cutting through the dimness, Leonard's head jerked up from the report he'd been reading. After a full day of visits – no matter how brief – from pretty much everyone on the bridge crew, he'd expected Jim to be out for hours yet. "Why aren't you?"

"Spent the last two weeks asleep." Only Jim Kirk could sound that cocky in a hospital bed. "Getting kind of bored with it."

Leonard made an exasperated sound, setting the PADD down next to him on the hover bed before heading over to check on his best friend. "You had a busy first day awake." He glanced over all Jim's vitals, a routine that had become automatic over the last few weeks. "Your body knows you need rest. Stop trying to fight it."

Jim's mouth curved upward just a little, despite how exhausted he looked. "You know me, Bones. Don't know how not to." Then he sobered. "Every time I close my eyes, I'm back in the decontamination chamber."

Memory kicked hard in Leonard's gut, making him taste bile for a second before he boxed it back up and away. The only thing he should be focused on right now is making sure Jim got the rest he needed. Everything else could wait until he found a few spare moments to drown it in alcohol. "I'll get you a sedative." He turned, all set to ready a hypospray. "Six solid hours of dreamless sleep."

"No." Jim caught his wrist, pulling him back. It was the thread of panic in his voice, however, that actually did the trick. "No sedatives. You're there one minute and...."

Jim stumbled over the sentence, not able to finish it, but Leonard could easily enough. _And gone the next._ He sighed. "I've got to do something, kid." He rubbed his hand across his mouth, resisting the urge to do something ridiculous like smoothing the hair back from Jim's forehead. "PT starts tomorrow. You're gonna need all the energy you can get."

Jim's mouth opened a little, the look in his eyes the same one he always got when he was figuring out the best way to blow a hole in the wall because he didn't like the doors. Then he focused on Leonard and his eyes narrowed. "When did _you_ last sleep?" Caught off guard by the question, Leonard hesitated a second too long. Jim's expression suddenly gentled. "You could use the sedative just as much as I could, you know."

"I have been." Four-hour bursts, just long enough to stay functional. He hadn't thought about sleeping at all, those first few nights, and had only started after Uhura and Spock staged an intervention.

" _You won't do Jim any good if you put yourself in the hospital." Nyota held the sides of his face and made him hold her gaze, the look in her eyes as fierce as any his mama had ever managed. "If you don't get some sleep, Leonard McCoy, so help me I will get a nurse to sedate you against your will."_

_"It would be the wisest course of action, Doctor." Spock added, his expression almost sympathetic. Maybe exhaustion was making Leonard hallucinate. "You would not want your faculties lowered to the point where they might possibly cause you to miss something important."_

_Leonard flinched at the well-aimed comment, then glared at him. "Low blow."_

_"I know." And now the sympathy was back. Yeah, he was definitely hallucinating. "But it is for your own good. Sleep, Doctor. It is what the captain would want."_

"Bones?"

The sound of Jim's voice snapped Leonard out of the memory, focusing on the younger man's now much-more-worried expression. "Clearly, you haven't been using them enough." He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. "I'll take a hypo if you will."

Touched, Leonard shook his head. "I can't. Hit my recommended limit." Actually, he'd passed it days ago – sedative should never be used to completely replace normal sleep cycles for longer than a 48 hour window – but the staff wasn't giving him trouble about it yet.

Jim's grip tightened, having somehow never gotten around to actually letting go of Leonard's wrist. "You haven't been sleeping at all." The look in his eyes made it clear it wasn't a question. "Not really."

When you didn't have a defense, come out swinging. "Did you really think I'd be able to?" Leonard tried a scowl, hoping it would be enough of a distraction from the way his voice had gone rough. "Every time I close _my_ eyes, you're back on my table in that damn—"

His throat closed up suddenly, refusing to finish the sentence, but he could tell from Jim's flinch that he didn't need to. Something raw flashed across Jim's face for just a moment, then his expression firmed into bloody-minded determination. "We'll do this the old-fashioned way, then." He tugged on Leonard's arm. "Get in the bed with me."

The fact that it seemed like a very good idea made every muscle in Leonard's body rear back. "Damn it, Jim." He pulled his arm away, only to have Jim grab it again an instant later. "This isn't—"

It was Jim's turn to scowl. "Don't be an ass. We'd pass out in the same bed back at the Academy sometimes, remember? And we're both less likely to get jerked awake by nightmares if we've got the other person pressed up against us."

The worst part of it was, it made sense. "We won't fit."

Jim's expression eased at that, the corners of his lips quirking upward. He knew he'd won. "All men say that, Bones, but the truth is—"

"Finish that sentence and you'll have to call Spock to come and cuddle you."

His grin widened for a moment as he tugged on Leonard's wrist again. "Uhura would probably take pictures. I'd never hear the end of it."

It turned out that two grown men did not, in fact, fit into a single hospital bed, at least not in any rational way (spooning was not a rational thing to do in this circumstance, damn it). They lay there like that for a little while, not touching, then Jim hooked an arm around Leonard's middle and scooted in just a little closer. He could feel Jim's exhale on the back of his neck, the full-body sigh of a man finally at rest.

Leonard's brain did not agree in the slightest. But something inside his chest unwound for the first time since he'd found out Jim had been demoted, the sudden relief of it leaving him unsteady.

After a few moments, Jim's quiet voice cut through the dimness. "I'm sorry." The words were barely a breath, sincere enough to hurt. "I'd do it again, but I'm still so _damn_ sorry."

"It's okay." A lie, mostly, but he'd have to figure out a way to make it true. His throat ached like he'd been screaming. "I knew what I was signing up for."

Jim didn't say anything for a moment, then his fingers curled in the front of Leonard's uniform. "You didn't sign up for this," he whispered, guilt and anger and something else coloring every word. "You hate getting chased and shot at and flying and pretty much every single thing about being out in space, but I dragged you out there with me because I didn't want to have to figure out how to live without you again. The only reason you went is you knew I'd get myself killed if you weren't there to put me back together.”

Leonard shifted around so he was facing Jim, needing to comfort even more than he needed to protect himself. "Are you seriously trying to tell me you think I signed myself onto that tin can out of the goodness of my heart?"

Jim's lips quirked again, but his eyes were bleak. "Yeah," he said softly. "You pretend to be a cynical asshole, but you've got the biggest heart of anyone I've ever met. You knew I needed you, so there you were."

Leonard stared at him, too stunned for a moment to form a reply. There was a pressure building in his chest, enough that he was amazed he could still breathe properly. “You idiot.” His voice was rough as he laid his hand against the side of Jim’s face. “You got it backwards. Keeping you alive is one of the most selfish things I do.”

Jim’s eyes flickered wide, full of surprise and something a braver man might have called wonder. He shifted closer, gaze locked with Leonard’s, only to catch himself and jerk back a little. “Shit,” he breathed, closing his eyes like something pained him. “Sorry.”

It was only then that Leonard processed what Jim had just stopped himself from doing, the realization unexpected enough that it chased everything else out of his head. “Jim….”

Jim opened his eyes again, his expression the same one he always used when he was trying to be brave. Leonard hated it more than all the others. “I know,” he whispered, lips curving in a way that hurt his heart. “Not your thing. We’ll blame it on the meds.”

It would be simplest, that way. Jim still had a long way to go before he was back on his feet, and Starfleet was already breathing down their neck with questions about everything that had happened. Leonard’s own reports were practically fiction by this point, ones that Spock thankfully signed off on without a word of complaint. They’d be tap dancing through a minefield for weeks yet, if they were lucky, and longer than that if they weren’t. This would just open the door to more trouble.

The truth was, though, that Leonard had already lived through the worst of it. There was nothing Starfleet could do to him, nothing _Jim_ could do to him, that would be worse than staring down at that body bag. For a moment, the world had ended.

But he’d gotten it back, for at least a little while longer.

Before he could think of any more reasons why he shouldn’t, Leonard closed the brief distance still between them and touched his lips to Jim’s. It wasn’t much of a kiss, mouths barely brushing and noses in the way, but when Jim’s arm tightened around him it felt like coming home.

A faint warning sound from his pulse sensor broke them apart. Jim grinned at the noise, breathless and bright enough to rival the stars he loved so much. “Promise me we’ll do that again when I’ve got the energy to back it up.”

Leonard couldn’t help but smile back, feeling young and shaky in a way he hadn’t since he was a kid. “I don’t exactly know how to do this.”

Jim’s grin widened. “I’ll show you the easy bits.” Then his expression softened, lifting a hand to smooth back Leonard’s hair. “We’ll figure out the hard stuff together.”

Leonard moved so his forehead rested against Jim’s, ridiculously hopeful. “Sounds like a plan.”

They fell asleep like that, dreamless and content.   


	2. Chapter 2

Jim watched Bones in the early morning light filtering in through the hospital room windows, the lines of his face softer and less annoyed-looking in sleep. He'd stared at that face for years now, frustrated and terrified and amused and all the shades of feeling in between, and sometimes Jim thought he knew it better than he knew his own.

Slowly, he lifted his hand and traced the tips of his fingers lightly over the slope of best friend's cheek. Bones was a deep sleeper when he was tired, a remnant – so he always said – of snatching a few minutes whenever he could during rotations back in med school. Jim had watched Bones sleep before, feeling weirdly protective and trying very hard not to think about anything.

And the thought he'd always avoided the hardest was the little whisper in the back of his head that said "mine." It was amazing enough that Bones had stayed all these years, a fact no less strange and impossible to Jim than meeting someone from an alternate reality or coming back from the dead. He hadn't dared push his luck, always aware that it was going to run out at some point.

When it finally had, thankfully lasting just long enough to make sure he didn't drag the rest of his crew down with him, he hadn't really been surprised. Sorry, heartbroken, but not surprised. He was always going to burn out.

Bones, though, hadn't been willing to accept that. And maybe, just maybe, something inside him had been whispering "mine," too.

Jim heard movement in the doorway, turning his head to see a wide-eyed nurse standing there. He mouthed "ten more minutes" at her, flashing the appropriate amount of fingers for emphasis, and when she hesitated he gave her his most charming smile. She tentatively smiled back, then gave him a small nod and slipped out of the room.

As he settled back against the pillow, Bones cracked one eye open. "So," he said after a moment. "Who was that? I need to know who I can never look in the eye again."

Jim put on his best innocent expression. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Bones. There was no one there."

Bones made a disbelieving noise, opening both eyes. "I'm always amazed at what a terrible liar you are." Then he hesitated. "Jim, last night...."

Jim went still, bracing himself. He should have known. "Yeah?"

Bones didn't say anything, just watching him for a long moment. Then he let out a breath. "That actually happened, right?"

Jim kept his voice light, but it cost him. "Wish it hadn't?"

Bones looked surprised for a second, then gave Jim his best "You're an idiot" look. Before Jim could even process the relief that washed through him, Bones caught his mouth in another kiss. They did a little better job on the angle this time – it turned out the energy showed up faster than he thought it would  – and the last of the tension slid out of him as they both melted into it. When his pulse sensor sounded again, Bones pulled away with a quiet curse. "Damn it," he muttered, leaning his forehead against Jim's. "You know, you could have let me know this is a possibility when you're not hooked up to every monitor known to man."

Jim cocked an eyebrow. "I'm not the one who keeps letting the equipment stop us."

Bones did his "are you kidding me?" face, but the corners of his mouth curved upward a little. "They can't kick you out of the hospital." His voice had the same wry edge it always did, but the softness beneath was all Jim heard. "You're a patient."

"They'd better not kick you out." Jim stole a  quick kiss, still thrilled that Bones would let him. "I'll just follow you, and then what kind of mess would we be in?"

Bones' lips curved even more, one of his rare, full smiles that hardly anyone ever got to see. "Same one we're always in." Then his expression went serious again, almost fragile, and he gently brushed his fingertips through Jim's hair. "Are you sure about this?" he asked quietly.

Bones was normally as blunt as a punch, but he could be delicate when he wanted to be. Jim thought about all the people he'd slept with over the last several years, a parade of vaguely pleasant memories that had always been so much safer than the thought of trying to make someone stay. He wouldn't miss it.

He smiled a little. "I'm sure." Then he took a deep breath, sliding a hand around the curve of Bones' neck. "Are you?"

Bones smile widened again, amused and affectionate. "It's a little late to read me the Jim Kirk warning label, darlin'," he murmured, moving closer. "I wrote the damn thing."

"I never wrote one for you." Jim's voice was just a breath, his eyes locked with Bones'. "I liked being the only one who knew the way in."

Bones' eyes went soft as he threaded his fingers through Jim's hair. "Well, you're stuck with me now."

Jim felt the words all the way through his body as he closed the last bit of distance between them. They sounded like a promise he might just be able to make himself believe in. "Good."

**Author's Note:**

> Come check out my weekly posts and original short fiction on my [blog](http://jennifferwardell.blogspot.com) or say hi to me on [Tumblr](http://sanctuaryforalluniverses.tumblr.com)!


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